Sunday, 26 March 2017

Chinua Achebe was a great Nigerian novelist. poet and short story writer of global significance. He is best known for his first novel “Things Fall Apart” which has been translated into 45 languages. His poem “Refugee Mother and Child” is a celebration of motherhood. It is set in a refugee camp somewhere in Africa. The representation of human suffering and the picture of a mother's tenderness for her son, that she soon will lose, is truly moving and compelling..Refugee Mother And Child

No Madonna and Child could touch
that picture of a mother's tenderness
for a son she soon would have to forget.
The air was heavy with odours

of diarrhoea of unwashed children
with washed-out ribs and dried-up
bottoms struggling in laboured
steps behind blown empty bellies. Most

mothers there had long ceased
to care but not this one; she held
a ghost smile between her teeth
and in her eyes the ghost of a mother's
pride as she combed the rust-coloured
hair left on his skull and then -

singing in her eyes - began carefully
to part it… In another life this
would have been a little daily
act of no consequence before his
breakfast and school; now she

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About Me

Just an individual based in West Wales, I follow freedoms breath and international solidarity. This blog just random stuff, some borrowed some new. Write a bit of poetry which I sometimes share here. My brain socialist, my head anarchist, my eyes pacifist, my blood revolutionary, laughter is the best medicine, but there are other ways. I try to keep dancing.

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"The invisible is only another unexplained country, a brave new world." - Angela Carter

"No matter how corrupt, greedy, and heartless our governments, our corporations, our media, and our religious and charitable institutions may become, the music will still be wonderful. " - Kurt Vonnegut

“Artists to my mind are the real architects of change, and not the political legislators who implement change after the fact. ” - William S.Burroughs

“We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art, the art of words.” ―Ursula K. Le Guin

"I believe in the power of poetry, which gives me reasons to look ahead and identify a glint of light." - Mahmoud Darwish

"In our age there is no such thing as 'keeping out of politics.' All issues are political issues. " - George Orwell"